Delhi-based Karthikay Kaushik has cracked almost all the exams there are for engineering aspirants; from JEE Mains to JEE Advanced to GATE to UPSC Engineering Services, Kaushik has done it all at the age of 24. After obtaining an AIR 2945 in JEE Advanced, Kaushik joined IIT Roorkee in 2015 as BTech in civil engineering.
After completing his BTech from IIT, Kaushik attempted the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) 20202 which made him secure a job at the Indian Oil. He secured AIR 26 in GATE 2020 on the basis of which he was selected as an officer at Indian Oil. He joined the company in January 2021 but left it soon after training in April. He was preparing for Engineering Services Exam at that time but due to his time being devoted to his job too, he missed the cut-off by 11 marks. This motivated him to leave his job and focus on UPSC entrance.
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In ESE 2020 — he went up to the interview stage and scored 796/1300, but the final cut-off was 807.
“I joined IOCL in January 2021 on the basis of my performance in GATE 2020. While in April 2021, the result of ESE 2020 was declared and I came to know that I missed the final cutoff by 11 marks. After this setback, I decided to leave my job at Indian Oil and prepare with a single-minded focus for ESE 2021,” explains Karthikay. He joined coaching platforms including Ace Engineering Institute to prepare for the exam.
“I realized that the syllabus of GATE is a subset of ESE. Therefore, my focus was to complete the whole syllabus of ESE first,” says he.
While his father works for Indian Railways, his mother is a housewife. Having always wanted to work in the public sector just like his father, he chose to opt for ESE.
“In the second attempt, I gave more focus on general studies or paper 1 of the preliminary stage. For improving my score in the mains stage, I doubled the number of mock tests as compared to the first attempt. This really helped me to improve my answer writing speed,” explains he.
He also put a lot of focus on his interview preparation. “I focused hard on the interview stage. In my first attempt, I did not give any mock interviews but this time, I gave three mock interviews which helped me to polish my personality and highlighted the technical areas where I was lacking. I also practiced in front of a mirror to observe myself in detail and improve my body language,” says he.
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Thanks to his focused attempt, he not only cleared the exam but got rank 1. Being an engineer at the officer level gives him “opportunities to contribute towards public welfare and nation-building,” claims Kaushik.
Apart from GATE and ESE, he has also qualified for the written round of BARC, twice in 2020 and 2021, and ISRO in 2020 but did not appear for their interviews “due to unavoidable circumstances.” He also got AIR 778 in JEE Mains and AIR 2945 in JEE Advanced.
Explaining his strategy for the exam preparations, he says one of his strengths was to maintain a decent level of preparation throughout the year. “I used to study and revise consistently in order to keep the syllabus on my tips. This really helped me to clear many exams with minimum effort. Due to this strategy, I never had to study keeping a single exam in focus. I used to take all of these exams as a test of my knowledge with respect to civil engineering. Currently, there are a lot of exams which are conducted throughout the year. The best strategy will be to keep things simple,” he explains.
“In order to retain such a vast syllabus in my mind, consistent revision played a very important role in my preparation journey. Last but not the least, practicing by giving mock tests gave me the confidence that I can perform well in this examination. This also helped me to identify recurring mistakes and increase my calculation speed,” Karthikay added.
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